Monseigneur & Eunice: Saintly Graces & Pornography
by worshippingbones
Summary: Mary Eunice tangles Timothy Howard and Arden in one of her usual plots with the use of some adult material from Arden.
1. Chapter 1

She cried and begged constantly. When Eunice spoke, she spoke calmly and clearly, projecting past the woman in her mind that told her to stop, begged her to listen.

She was tiring out, though.

Eunice had been hysterical for a weeks now, nearly from sun up to sun down. She was slowly learning not to bother reasoning and just kept the brain that contained them both awash with grief and fright, silently mourning all the damage being done in her name, with her hands. No more screaming, at least.

The Devil had a handful of senses at Its disposal, certainly, but what it saw most was openings. Opportunities for misunderstanding, misleading, fatal manipulation. Places to leave pockets of corruption. It wasn't hiding much anymore, but it blended in well with the asylum – very few people had wondered about her change of heart.

It could be referred to as any gender; it could see above, below, and behind. When it really let go in Jude's former office, Eunice would swing her legs up on the desk and read the paper – or scheme – and filth would drip down her body, unearthly, seeping from pores, clumping in her fine blonde hair. Oily, thick, and smelling of gasoline and burnt flesh, she'd leave marks all over the carpet and wooden floors when she danced around the room. Nurses would knock on the door and be ushered in to find her on hands and knees, scrubbing the floor, exasperated. "Spilled my coffee again," she'd sigh. "I'm so clumsy. It's a wonder God accepts me in His house, seeing as I'm just going to dirty it up."

That much was true. Eunice had done a lot of dirtying.

She made sure to perpetually dominate Arden, which wreaked hell on his psyche, and she could see it in the way he ignored her from day to day. He fed the creatures in the woods himself most days while Eunice went through the things in his office and smiled at the occasional dirty magazine. His dirty magazines ranged from putrid to virgin-clean. Women bound up and gagged and women flashing their ankles. She had to stifle laughter on occasion, flipping through impatiently, looking for the good stuff and finding where he had drawn pubic hair on some of the bare models. What a freak. And they thought he was doing _research_ down here?

He did do research when she was around, at least.

They had taken on an odd dynamic, and Arden didn't like it. She was the supervisor, he was the worker. He caught her chomping on one of his cigars once, and had nearly hit her for it, which would've nearly broken the old Mary Eunice – this one just grinned and hit him straight in the face, hard, for considering laying that hand on her.

One day, after a few moments of arguing, she nicked one of his favorite magazines from under a filing cabinet and left the room with it hidden under her habit. Arden had stormed off to apparently collect hair samples from patients and had just barely missed her stealing away into his office.

Weasel-swift, she stole down the hallway, up the staircase and into her- Jude's old office- and threw the magazine onto her desk. She pushed papers around, rearranging stacks, looking- looking for a small slip of paper with a note from Arden days ago, a note in his handwriting, prompting her to meet him in the woods.

What went unspoken in the note was that they were arranging a feeding for the Raspers – but without this context, she straightened the crumpled paper out, flipped and flipped through the magazine to a particularly sinful page, stuck the note on top of the page, stepped back, and screamed.

It wasn't a blood-curdling noise. It wasn't even a particularly frightened scream. It was, though, a scream of disgust and surprise, just loud enough to prick the ears of the Timothy Howard, who had been on his way downstairs. Spinning on a heel, he hurried – he never truly ran, he thought it unbecoming – to her door and knocked thrice.

"Sister?"

Sobbing, a cough to clear a throat, a strangled noise of upset. Distinctly feminine. "Oh, come here, please, Monseigneur."

Mary Eunice hadn't cried in a while, he wondered as he opened the door. Her resolved seemed to have toughened, but here was the familiar image of her with a hand clasped over her mouth, eyes reddened and swimming in tears.

"What's wrong? Sister, what's happening?" There seemed to be nothing unusual in the room, no cause for this upset. He closed the door carefully, ensuring privacy between them.

"It's this," she choked, sniffling as she gestured to something on her desk. As he approached, his heart dropped – what in God's name was this doing here?

"I just-" she took a long, shaky breath, cleared her throat, and tried again. "I just came in, I was working with Arden- and he- and he left the room to get something- told me to stay-" His brows furrowed and he inhaled, looking at the woman splayed between two full pages, legs fully spread. "He told me to stay in his lab but I realized I had forgotten – I had forgotten my clipboard, so I came back to get it-" she indicated to her clipboard - "and this was on my desk, it's his handwriting, I don't understand-"

MEET ME IN THE FOREST TONIGHT

No signature, but he knew the handwriting and crossed himself. "This is repugnant," he started as she wailed and buried her head in her hands – he put a gentlemanly arm around her and she leaned into him. "I nearly don't want to understand. This is a true derailment of judgment, indeed."

"He's so nice to me," she gasped, fine blonde hair spilling out from under her the hood of her habit – Timothy Howard gently reached down and tucked the stray lock back under. "I never thought he'd be- so impure- I've worked with him so much and I never thought-"

"I'll get rid of this," the Monseigneur spat, gathering the filthy magazine and the piece of paper in one hand. "This shouldn't be here. We've known for a long time that Doctor Arden proclaimed no real faith," he continued heavily. "But I didn't expect him to cross this line so severely."

There was a sudden elephant in the room as Eunice continued to cry, silently, and the Monseigneur pulled her just a tad closer to his side. "...You say he never laid a hand on you, correct?"

She nodded. Tearfully, but she nodded, thank God.

He looked down at the incriminating paper in his hands. The handwriting felt like a slap, the curves of each letter a terrible confession.

"I'll speak to him."

Mary Eunice jolted out from under his arm, turning to him, face inches from his. He noted the fine lines between her eyebrows, at the corners of her mouth, her wide eyes, lips pink without lipstick. A beautiful woman. How dare Arden. Eunice placed a hand on his upper chest and whispered, "You can't tell him."

"I think it's best if we bring this act out in the open. I don't want him working with you if we're not sure what he's- if he can't be trusted, Sister. I want no harm to come to you."

"It's fine," she said, lowering her eyes- demure, he noted. She pressed a wrist to her eyes and took a deep breath, stepping back. "It's fine. I'm fine. We still have work to do together, I don't want to ruin our work relationship."

Timothy Howard watched her, troubled. "If you insist. I'll dispose of these, in the meantime, and Sister, if you could... let me know if anything else happens. Tell me immediately."

"Understood." She was rearranging her hair already, back straightened, tears gone. How resilient. Always putting work first.

"Thank you for... being so steadfast. Your contribution to this institution is immeasurable."

"Always full of compliments," she mumbled, wiping away the last of the tears, hiding a smile with her head lowered. "Could you possibly do me a favor?"

He was a step from the door, but turned, evidence still in hand. "Anything."

"Please double your prayers tonight. One for Arden. I would hate to compromise his soul over something.. petty like this. I know you'll understand. He may need some forgiveness."

The Monseigneur held her eye contact, heavy brows quirked, until he broke out in a smile and bowed his head. "Heaven most certainly has a spot for you, dearest Mary-Eunice."

Her smile was radiant, hands clasped, watching him leave. It wasn't until after the lock clicked that she kicked her shoes off to separate corners of the room, slid the habit off and broke out the whiskey for mischief well done.


	2. Chapter 2

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I felt super bad for writing this whole deal after the episode where.. well. You know. It took me a while to adjust myself and figure out where to go after this, seeing as their relationship took a deadly/creepy turn. Please forgive the wait, as I was also moving out of state at the time and am now settled. By the way, thank you all so much for the comments/favorites. Love you guys for reading my work. Love you and thank you and all that!

DOUBLE AUTHOR'S NOTE: Holy shit season finale, right? I don't even have anything to say. RIP 99% of the cast and thank you everyone who worked on this beautiful production and struggled for so many months to confuse and upset us all.

Eunice got up early because sleep was a precaution It took to keep her body healthy. It didn't need rest; the devil worked at all hours, and even in sleep when Eunice's trapped conscious had sunk into the levels of REM the devil's presence burned hot, twisted all her dreams into struggles for control and terrible, bloody failures on Eunice's part.

It schemed at night, like It did all day, but at night, there was no screaming subconscious trying to divert the thoughts. It schemed plans too big for Its reach, imagined Briarcliff crumbling suddenly, the families of the staff mourning, mothers doubled with sobs, all the inmates' dreams crushed with palpable snaps that echoed their bones under the weight of the rubble.

Much like a human, goals kept It awake. It was childlike with ambition, seething with elaborate traps and tricks that bordered on the absurd.

That was how It played, but this is how It worked.

Heels tapped with the sway of her hips, the silk under her habit kissing her thighs as she made the morning rounds, stride wide and chin up. She carried a clipboard under one arm, a flashlight on a cord in the other, and spun the flashlight haphazardly as she strolled, sending flashes of light into sleeping patient's rooms. The sun had hardly breached the crust of the horizon and there was Eunice, rapping on doors, pep talking the mentally ill, sucking her lower lip between her teeth and making ominous notes on those who wanted to sleep in late. It's your own fault, she reprimanded, raising her eyebrows and poking her pencil through the patient's window grates. We'll have to bring this up in therapy later.

Lana understood this routine. She understood that it was bullshit. Eunice did this erratically once or twice a week before the sun rose (judging by the dead, damp dark that blackened the halls before the lights switched on at 7:00) and then moved on, and the official call to wake up wasn't for another two hours.

Occasionally, patients would stay up once being roused by Eunice, but Lana, among others, patiently rose so that Eunice could take note and then returned to her mattress once she had rounded the corner. She understood that this was tactic to grind them down, wear them out, frighten them, establish Eunice as the authority by throwing the sheer weight of her position, and it worked, hatefully. Tired faces appeared at their windows one by one, washed bright white for the split seconds that the Sister's flashlight swung over them.

Lana could say she honestly, sincerely, down-to-the-rotten-core hated a lot of these days and Eunice was stacking up nicely with the rest, but despite it, she realized how much more she appreciated those two extra hours of sleep after having been dragged out of bed.

Once the unnecessary morning rounds were completed and she had thrown the fake set of notes she had used to frighten the patients away, she went down to check on Arden, her companion in painfully early mornings. He was tireless, she noted, and he cut no corners, a trait Howard didn't share.

Timothy Howard was snakelike in his way; if there was a way to get past an obstacle to make his life easier, he would do it, usually regardless of moral conundrums or inappropriate conduct. His moral compass was the Lord and it he bent it; had it been physical, the glass would've splintered long ago under his demands. He abstained from temptations of the flesh quite well, but he wasn't blind to Arden's experiments, or the electroshock, or the violence on the ward, or the filth, the infections, the deaths, the bodies in the woods.

Turn a blind eye, she whispered once to him in passing when she saw him rubbing his temple after watching attendants beat a patient. He whipped around to face her, hand frozen in midair, lips parted in fright and the fear of exposure. "...So that they can do their job," Eunice added kindly, softly, and his features softened immediately. Any doubt she caused him was always momentary and followed up with so much comfort and affection that he wondered if he was losing it himself, if the strain was breaking him like it was breaking Jude. There was nothing wrong with Eunice.


End file.
